


Strays

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Prison Break
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 06:57:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10566012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: Lincoln deals with Michael's first stray.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired from this remark made by a friend, "Now I want kid!fic with puppies and kitties and maybe a baby skunk!" This stems from Lincoln's line in 3x12 Hell or High Water about Michael and strays.

“You are fucking kidding me,” Lincoln said, his voice little more than a vehement whisper, only because he was terrified of the creature in the box.  
  
“No,” Michael said seriously. “It’s going to drop below zero tonight, Linc, I couldn’t leave him out there!”  
  
Lincoln raised his eyes from the box and backed away slowly, his gaze landing on his younger brother with a virtual slap. “We live in fucking downtown Chicago, how the hell did you manage to find a skunk?”  
  
Michael shrugged, and a smile played at his lips as he looked back down on his quarry. “He was poking around the garbage can when I took out the trash. He didn’t even seem scared of me.”  
  
“Of course, he didn’t seem scared of you!” Lincoln shouted, but when a scratching sound came from the box next to his brother, he lowered his voice again. “He’ll fuckin’ spray you and then we’ll stink to high heaven for weeks, Michael! Skunks have a terrible smell.”  
  
“He’s so cute, though, Linc, look at him. He has blue eyes.”  
  
“I don’t care if he craps gold nuggets, he’s not sleeping in this apartment.” Lincoln pointed at the door. “You have to _carefully_  take him back outside and set him free.” Lincoln enunciated  _carefully_  as though Michael didn’t have a bigger vocabulary than he did.  
  
“But Linc,” Michael whined, “it’s already less than ten degrees out there–“  
  
“I don’t care! He’s got fur! And he lives in the city, he’s obviously...a city skunk, er, a–he’s adaptable, yeah, you know, smart for a skunk. If he’s survived this long, a little cold weather won’t hurt him,” Lincoln could feel himself stretching, trying to latch on to something his 10 year old brother was still young enough to believe, but not too sophisticated to see through. Lincoln had no idea what sort of survival skills skunks had. After all, he was a city kid himself. He’d never even seen a skunk in person before tonight.  
  
Michael’s wide eyes lifted from the box to Lincoln and there was that glimmer of child-like trust that Lincoln normally found so infuriating in his little brother. He’d lost it himself, years before, and usually he just wanted Michael to hurry up and figure out what a shit-hole the world was so he didn’t have to be alone in his cynicism, but right now, whatever it took to get the skunk out of the house was the thing he would treasure in Michael forever.  
  
“And besides,” Lincoln said, the idea occurring to him so rapidly, he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it to begin with. “What if his momma’s out there looking for him? He’s obviously a baby. He needs his mom, Mikey.”  
  
Michael’s blue-green eyes blinked slowly and then he chewed on his bottom lip. He didn’t answer immediately, and Lincoln knew he was thinking of their own mother, who lay in a hospital across town recovering from chemotherapy treatments. “You’re right, of course,” Michael said. Then his eyes widened a little and he asked, “You’ll go with me to take him back to his momma?”  
  
Lincoln could think a hundred things he’d rather do than bundle up for the February weather of Chicago and prolong his proximity to the skunk, but he also knew he couldn’t trust Michael to take the thing out if he didn’t go with him. “Sure thing, buddy,” he murmured. “Let’s get our coats and gloves on.”  
  
As they dressed, Lincoln recited silently in his head,  _Please don’t spray us, please don’t spray us, please don’t spray us_. All the way down the stairs (three floors worth) he strained his neck as far back as he could to keep his face from being directly over the box. As they passed the mailbox lockers in the lobby and reached the front doors, he said, “Let’s just tip the box over and let him run out the door, okay?”  
  
Michael’s horrified eyes came up and he said, “We can’t do that!” in a scandalized tone. “We have to take him back to the garbage bin! That’s where his mom will be looking for him.”  
  
That was when Lincoln realized Michael  _did_  believe everything he said to him, and he would have to walk half a block further, increasing their chances of reeking so bad nobody would let them see their mother tomorrow.   
  
But he couldn’t tell Michael that.  
  
At some point, he stopped chanting for the skunk to leave them unstained and he began to hope his brother could always believe in the improbabilities that life was made up of. Not because he wanted his brother to live in a fantasy world, but because it was faith like Michael’s that got them to the garbage can, and allowed him to reach in and pick up the skunk and set it down as opposed to tipping the box over and running for it like Lincoln wanted to.  
  
They watched the skunk scuttle away, and Michael’s hand suddenly gripped Lincoln’s. Through both their mittens, Lincoln could feel the strength of his brother’s grasp. “Remember for next time, ‘kay, Mikey?”  
  
“Remember what?” Michael asked, the steam of his hot breath on the cold air whooshing out as they turned around and headed back to the apartment lobby.  
  
“If you bring home stuff like that, make sure they’re strays. We don’t want to steal people’s kids, right?”  
  
Michael giggled and tugged on Lincoln’s hand so that they both walked more quickly to get out of the cold night into their building. “You bet, Linc.”


End file.
